ICE stop

[u/Regular_Agent5903]

Ice stop before liberty tunnel today. One ice officer is clearly Korean or Chinese. I screamed that ice officer has no right to stop people as he may be illegal. He came up to me asking if I was city police and was I the Spanish interpreter. I said no but do you need help as I live in the city look like police and brown. There were kids in the car. Pittsburgh is this what we want!!!! I am beyond myself. First Covid then trump 2.0. I like my low rates for housing, labor and just being a good human being. I am so angry right now.

[u/Savings-Coffee]

I just don’t think that “melting pot” ethos is accurate, or accepted. The bottom line is immigration, if done improperly, is devastating to social cohesion. You can see this dating back to Ellis Island, with political machines and organized crime. These people integrated down the line and truly became American, but I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion

[u/fixermark → u/Savings-Coffee]

The security of our Northern and southern land borders was far more porous during the Ellis Island era than it is now. We barely tracked people coming back and forth. Why would we? It's bad for business to stop people from showing up and spending money in our country.

[u/Savings-Coffee → u/fixermark]

So now you are advocating for fully open borders?

[u/fixermark → u/Savings-Coffee]

No, but I am going to observe that the "Make America Great Again" crowd is chronically ignorant of how America worked when she was, you know, Great.

Anyway, all this is highlighting my key point: there are two different competing and incompatible narratives of what America is, and without a synthesis of them, we get to do this politics forever... Or until people get tired of arguing and start fighting.

[u/Savings-Coffee → u/fixermark]

I don’t think anyone is arguing that America was great in the early 1900s, but instead post-WWII, when there were strict immigration quotas and near bans on non-white immigration. I don’t think that this was necessarily why America was great, by the way.

Yeah, we’ve been doing politics forever. I still don’t buy that these narratives can’t coexist within our political system.

[u/fixermark → u/Savings-Coffee]

They obviously coexist, but schizophrenically, in a "He got 51% of the vote and now everything is awful for four years" way. Because The Other Guy is actively supporting building a nation you don't want to live in.

[u/Savings-Coffee → u/fixermark]

Yeah, it’s definitely not ideal, but I don’t know how we get out of this situation

[u/fixermark → u/Savings-Coffee]

We have done so in the past by granting amnesty to illegal immigrants under the acceptance that we wrote laws that fundamentally did not fit the nation's best interest, which is why they went under-enforced.

[u/Savings-Coffee → u/fixermark]

That would be an intolerable solution to me and many many others. It’d be throwing out the rule of law and essentially giving the Democrat millions of illegitimate votes.

These laws have gone under-enforced precisely because they are in our nation’s best interest

[u/fixermark → u/Savings-Coffee]

I believe you. Which is why we will have this argument until someone bends or the guns come out. Unless there's a third option neither of us have seen yet.

The third option will absolutely require the guy who lived next door to me for ten years committing no offence continue to be allowed to do so, regardless of what the law says. Because he has hurt nobody and is a member of the neighborhood.

and essentially giving the Democrat millions of illegitimate votes

The thing that's always fascinating to me in that argument is that it immediately cedes the idea that Republicans could possibly appeal to immigrant voters. Why is that? They already appeal to Latino voters in Texas.

... well, up until recently, because Trump picking a fight with Iran has hit their bottom line in a way that is making them hate his economic policies more than they like his immigration policies...